Donald Trump’s successful electoral coalition has always been constructed on a series of paradoxes.
The brash New York (now Floridian) property developer who fought for the interests of disillusioned rust belt America. A personally amoral figure who has won the support of large parts of the country’s fundamentalist evangelical movement. The man mocked as dim in all those Saturday Night Live sketches who somehow bested rivals and outran legal challenges to return to the White House.
Most compelling of all has been a takeover of the Republican Party, as well as enthusiasm in America’s financial citadels and tech companies, whom he won over to back his second presidency.
But a number of these support groups look a lot shakier than they did before the tariff bazooka was discharged at massive scale, roiling the markets and crashing a lot of upbeat expectations. Both the extent and the manner of the rollout of punitive tariffs are showing the cracks in Maga ideology – and what happens when it is applied indiscriminately to America’s external relationships and internal economy.
Bitter arguments extend into the heart of Trump’s own circle and are apparent in wobbles about how to handle the President’s central message that tariffs are “beautiful” and “medicine”. But for what ills and at what cost? “If you are expecting penicillin and get mercury treatment,” one erstwhile economic adviser to Trump tells me, “You have a right to get mad.”
In the administration itself, two camps are emerging. One includes Peter Navarro, Trump’s bullish adviser on trade, who want to keep up maximum pressure on countries, notably China, who are punching back with stratospheric tariffs of their own.
They are pitted against those who have always regarded the “bazooka” as a way to shock countries into realigning their balance of trade with the US. Trump has been opaque on precisely which ills he wants tariffs to address in detail, which multiplies political fractures.
‘In the Trump administration itself, two camps are emerging’
Elon Musk and other small-state libertarian members of the administration believe that the aim is to whittle away tariffs by forcing tough negotiation. But some of Trump’s own explanation has been more about keeping tariffs high in order to raise revenue – and force interest rate cuts from the Fed (the US central bank).
This sounds technical, but it is symbolic of the deeper questions many converts are starting to ask. It has certainly tested the back-bending tolerance extended to a maverick President by figures like the lionised JP Morgan boss, Jamie Dimon, who joined one of the President’s advisory councils and soft-pedalled on criticising Trump’s economic vision. He has now warned of negative impacts on growth and leaving America isolated from economic allies (essentially, playing into the hands of China, which may end up as the winner in a global trade scramble).
The Republican Party of the “stripey tie” GOP (Grand Old Party) has withered or reduced to the outer shores of Never Trump-land. But the President still needs prosperous, conservative (small-c) America onside. Outside the jostling for power close to Mar-a-Lago, Republicans walk a line in many states between the tone of Trump’s raucous politics and more nuanced concern at state level they need to address.
This group is not breaking-up in public with the White House, but a lot of statements hoping for speedy negotiations on settlements speak to an emerging “tariff anxiety syndrome” among previously loyal, or at least quiet, groups.
It is true that targeting Trump is a high-risk business. The threat now of being tarred by the President as “Panicans” (a coinage claiming that critics are hewing to a “new party based on Weak and Stupid people”) is a reminder that he fights back hard against any criticism.
The problem with the Panican version is that it is hard to square with the ranks of previous supporters. Ranging from the “tech bro” constituency of influential podcasters like Ben Shapiro, who has parted company with Trump over tariffs, highlighting the lack of clarity about what happens next to the billionaire hedge-funder ranks Trump has often relied on for support, to the kind of people who exemplify the gilded edge of the American dream, like the punchy hedge-funder Bill Ackman. The latter has warned of “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter”.
square MARK WALLACE
The UK can still outmanoeuvre Trump's tariffs - and win
Read MoreWhatever their flaws or biases of these groups, weak and stupid does not really capture them – many of them have been enthusiasts for the wake-up call of the present administration and its war on the bloating of state agencies and annoyances of officious diversity programmes.
Trump may be more theological in his attachment to the history of the US as a nation that can imperiously impose trade terms. But he is also an “art of the deal” mogul who draws his energy from wins, or at least declaring wins. Stock market routs won’t bother him, even if the value destruction alarms many of his well-heeled supporters.
What falls can always rise again – but the conundrum is how that will happen if the effect of Trump’s intervention is to deter countries from trading with the US. Meanwhile his promise of reindustrialising the US – which would benefit the “new Trumpian” voters from a raft of ethnic minorities and suburban female converts who opted for him largely to cure their pocket-book ills – looks far less likely to be delivered on any time scale.
Very often, he has found ways to confound his critics. But the extraordinary coalition of interests that sped him to power has been shaken by the reverberations of his tariff impositions and even more so by uncertainty about what follows.
It’s not so much his established antagonists on the left of centre or liberal free marketeers he needs to watch, but the fresh array of apostates, previously receptive of his agenda, doubting the way out of this impasse. For now, they can be dismissed as weak or stupid. But there are a lot of them about – and no sign of a clear answer to their tariff anxiety syndrome.
Anne McElvoy is co-host of the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast
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